what's joe up to...

We left on Friday and headed up to the White Mountains (east of the Sierras) to camp at Grandview Campground near the Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest at a little. It is a primitive site - no water (anywhere), pit toilets, dry/dusty, but really dark skies and almost no light pollution (check this map ). We arrived late on Friday and after finally finding a campsite we set up our 18" UC telescope (in the picture behind us) and camp. Many of the campsites were taken but not many people with telescopes even though it was new moon. Unfortunately, there were several vehicles that drove through the area to quickly during the night kicking up dust along the way. After letting the telescope cool down we started observing around midnight - the sky was nice and dark but the seeing could have been better. Regardless, it was nice to be out camping with such nice weather. We stayed up and observed until around 4:30am and looked at several galaxies and planetary nebula. I think our favorite of the night was the Blue Snowball planetary nebula. We spent Saturday down in the nearby town of Bishop, using the WiFi at Starubcks to get some work done then headed back up to the campground later (and cooler) in the day. Saturday night was much the same as Friday just spending the night out camping.